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Saturday, March 03, 2007

Mary Gordon Wins Short-Story Prize

The Story Prize -- the third annual award given to a collection of short stories -- was given to Irish-American writer Mary Gordon at the New School for Social Research on Wednesday. The prize is awarded by New York philanthropist Julie Lindsey and Business Week editor Larry Dark, who edited the O. Henry Awards from 1997-2002.

Mary Gordon, right, at Ireland House, March 2006

Photo credit: Patricia Jameson-Sammartano

In a field of 65 books of short fiction published by 44 publishers or imprints, Ms. Gordon won for "The Stories of Mary Gordon," published by Pantheon Books. The runners-up were Rick Bass for "The Lives of Rocks" (Houghton Miflin) and George Saunders for "In Persuasion Nation" (Riverhead Books). The jury consisted of Edwidge Danticat, Ron Hogan and Mitchell Kaplan. The award carries with it a prize of $20,000 and an engraved silver bowl. Previous winners are "The Hill Road" by Patrick O'Keefe, a series of novellas set in a fictional Irish fishing village, and "The Dew Breaker" by Ms. Danticat.